Vol.II, No.4
www.renewssource.com
February 15, 2017
Why Did They Put It There? By Pat Farrell
PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID San Antonio, Texas Paid Permit #1590
When I was in elementary school (known then as grammar school), we learned a lot about Geography including such things as identifying on maps, the oceans, rivers and mountains around the world and of course learning the locations for the various countries and states and their capitals. I understand that the geography taught these days comes as a very small segment that is included under Social Studies and that Americans now know very little about the subject. Granted, the world is ever changing with countries being renamed and rivers altering their courses, but too many of our younger folks don’t even know much about the geography of the United States and at times even the state in which they live. Back in the day, everyone had to learn the names of each state and its capi-
tal, but is that really so critical now, with so many more important things to learn and the information available on the internet? Fortunately we didn’t have to learn where in each state the capitals were located because in many ways that seems to follow no specific pattern nor did we need to know how the capitals got their names. One might think that the most populous city in the state should be the capital city but that occurs in only 17 of the 50 states and among the 10 most populous cities only Phoenix is a capital. It would also seem reasonable that the government might be centrally located within the state, but that does not always seem to be a consideration either. Most of the current state capitals were not originally the first ones established. If you remember, our nation’s capital is located way over on the East Coast because it was centrally located for the 13 colony nation that existed then and is essentially at a point relatively equidistant between the North and the South after the Civil War. However there has not been any serious consideration to centralize it, and actually, following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was where the Congress first originally met and later, due to efforts to avoid the advancing British army, the meetings moved, in succession to Baltimore, Maryland; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; York, Pennsylvania; Princeton, New Jersey; Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey and New York City, New York before finally settling into Washington, D.C. in 1800. Determination of which city will become the capital of a state seems to depend largely upon politics, as representatives from the various cities want the seat
of power in their own hometown, and at times this may have even been accomplished through devious means. For example, Lewiston was the original capital of Idaho but the declaration documents were stolen and taken to Boise where the capital location was then changed. And, in many cases the original capitals were established centrally to serve only an area that had been immigrant settled, while other parts of the state may have still been Indian occupied. In other cases capitals were established in or moved to less populated areas of the state to draw settlers to that part of the state as in the case of Alabama where the capital was originally in Tuscaloosa but was moved to Montgomery to draw the population and economy eastward. Not even close to being central to all of Alaska, Sitka was its original capital but was later moved to Juneau, another spot on the lower panhandle, while the most populous cities are Anchorage and Fairbanks, located in the much larger upper interior area of the state. Also on a panhandle is Florida’s capital, Tallahassee, established in the early 1800’s as central to its two most populous cities, Pensacola and St. Augustine, but later attempts to move it to Orlando were unacceptable. And in states like Nevada (Carson City), Minnesota (St Paul) and Wyoming (Cheyenne) the capitals are located almost on the boarder of an adjoining state. According to circulating stories, whether true or not, some of the state capital names were arrived at with the help of a little alcoholic inducement. It is rumored that the naming of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was thought to be the name of the local tribe, was not what the tribe called themselves and the word is thought to be
the French spelling for a Sioux word meaning “people who speak a foreign language.” However, the naming of Cheyenne occurred during a day-long drunken celebration in 1867 when, among many other of the numerous toasts, was one to the “health of the mule train!” And in Alaska, a gold prospector, Joe Juneau, was said to have bribed others with money and alcohol to name the settlement after him, which they did, even though a year later he left the territory forever. The town, built upon the Pueblo Grande ruins, an area first populated by the Ho Ho Kam civilization (the people who have gone) is Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, which was originally called Pumpkinville by its early settlers. The name Phoenix is thought to have been suggested by a well-read (and drunken) Englishman (“Lord” Darrel Duppa) who was living in the area, and who likened the city to the mythical bird rising from the ashes. Some state capitals on or near the Eastern shore were named after the original home town of a prominent person in the state such as Hartford, Connecticut for Hertford, England; Boston, Massachusetts for Boston in Lincolnshire; Dover, Delaware for a port town in Kent, or perhaps to honor a prominent English person as in Annapolis, Maryland for Princess Anne (later Queen Anne) or Raleigh, North Carolina for Sir Walter Raleigh’s original Colony, “Cittie of Raleigh,” which mysteriously disappeared a few years later, and Richmond, Virginia so named because it was reminiscent of Richmond-uponThames in Surrey County, England. Since my Mother and Father came from Pierre and Fort Pierre South Dakota, respectively, I was interested to learn that Pierre was originally called Matto from the